


The Long Way

by devovitsuasartes



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Canon Compliant Nipple Pinching, Depression, Domestic, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-06 07:29:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12206631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovitsuasartes/pseuds/devovitsuasartes
Summary: Canon-compliant imagining of what happened between the season 4 finale and the season 5 premiere.





	1. Chapter 1

It was the sound of voices and activity outside his bedroom door that woke Mickey up - far too early. He screwed up his face and groaned, then grabbed his pillow, laid his head down on the mattress and mashed the pillow down against the side of his head, trying to block out the noise as his brain and body slowly woke up. Pretty soon, however, it became clear that there was no way he was getting back to sleep.

Mickey reluctantly put the pillow back and sat up in bed, rubbing his face with one hand and reaching out blindly with the other, until he found the can of flat beer on the bedside table. It didn’t taste great, but at least it cleaned out his mouth a little. Finally, Mickey glanced over at the other side of the bed at the huddled shape under the blanket.

“Hey,” he said, hoarsely, reaching out and gently resting his hand on what he assumed was Ian’s shoulder. Ian didn’t move - not even to recoil from the touch.

A crash on the other side of the door and a rapidly fired curse word finally forced Mickey out of bed. He pulled on yesterday’s boxers and shirt and kicked the bedroom door open, stomping out to investigate the source of the racket.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Mickey groaned, confronted by the sight of his sister and Fiona Gallagher on their knees in front of the weapon cabinet, surrounded by objects on a sliding scale of lethality.

“Hey, how’s he doing?” Fiona fired back, instead of answering the question, craning her neck to try and peer into the bedroom. Mickey pulled the door shut behind him, instinctively protective of Ian.

“No change,” he replied shortly. “Are you two planning a fucking bank heist or something?”

Mandy glanced at Fiona, who just raised her eyebrows and got back to stacking knives inside the cupboard. With the debate over who would do the explaining apparently settled, Mandy stood up and moved closer to Mickey, speaking in that hushed, timid voice that she’d starting using more and more since she’d been dating Kenyatta.

“We’re hiding the guns, Mick. And anything dangerous.” She tilted her head pointedly at the bedroom door. “You know. Ian?”

“Bit of a fuckin’ overreaction, don’t you think?” Mickey snapped. “Hell, I stayed in bed longer than this that time I ate bad seafood.”

“You’re the one who suggested it,” Fiona interrupted briskly, and Mickey could tell by her clipped tones that she was pissed off at him. “Last night, remember?”

“Yeah, I said we could hide the fucking knives if he gets suicidal. _If_.”

“You wanna know one of the first signs that someone’s suicidal?” Fiona asked, still in that jerky, pissed-off voice. “They try to commit suicide. Or they succeed. I’d rather not wait for that sign, since that’s my little brother you’ve got in there.” Mickey opens his mouth to object, but Fiona had already stood up and was rounding on Mickey - just tall enough that she could tower over him a little. “So unless you’re going to let me take him home, or to a hospital, you’d better start pitching in.”

Mickey clenched his jaw, glaring at her. “This is my fucking house. You don’t get to...”

“You said you’d take care of him,” Fiona barreled on, planting her hands firmly on her hips. “Did you change your mind?”

“Of course not, but…”

“Well, this is what taking care of him means. It means getting up early and doing what needs to be done, starting with rounding up anything dangerous in your bedroom and bringing it all out here. That means guns, knives, drugs, hand grenades, razors - hell, even toenail clippers.”

“I don’t have any toenail clippers.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “Of course that’s the one thing on the list you don’t own. Go on, you get started in there and I’ll put some coffee on.”

Mickey clenched his fists. He didn’t have to take orders from this bitch in his own house. But then he saw Mandy standing behind Fiona, her arms wrapped around her stomach, looking at him pleadingly.

_This is what taking care of him means._

“Two sugars,” Mickey said at last, trying to regain some of the high ground.

Fiona just shook her head and walked past him.

Mickey wanted until she was in the kitchen before rounding on his sister. “You let her in?” he accused in a hushed whisper.

“She’s his sister, Mick,” Mandy shot back, a pleading lilt to her voice. “What if I was holed up in the Gallagher house and Lip tried to stop you from seeing me?”

“I’d say ‘great, keep her, have a nice life.’”

Mandy smiled a little at that, but her expression soon turned serious again. “She knows what she’s doing. She knows how to handle… this.”

“We don’t even know what _this_ is. Not for sure.”

“Mickey…” Mandy stepped a little closer, and spoke quietly. “You know his mom has it. I looked it up online and there’s like a one in five chance of kids getting it if one of their parents has it. One in five chance, six Gallaghers…”

“Alright, alright, I can do the fucking math.”.

“What is all the noise?”

Mickey turned to find Nika scratching her belly sleepily, dressed only in a cropped T-shirt and panties, and sporting some outrageous bed head.

“Who’s that?” Mandy asked, confused.

Fuck. Mickey had forgotten this bitch was moving in. “No one. Just one of my girls. She lives here now.”

“Since _when?_ ”

“Lana says keep noise down or you wake baby.”

“OK, thanks so much for the message,” Mickey gritted out, as patiently as he could manage. “But we’re kind of in the middle of something here, so if you could go stick your face back between my wife’s legs and shut the fuck up, that’d be great.”

Nika shrugged indifferently and wandered back to Svetlana’s bedroom, leaving Mickey alone with a very confused Mandy.

“Yeah, apparently Svetlana’s a lesbian now,” Mickey explained.

“When did that happen?”

“I don’t fucking… Tuesday, I guess? Or always. Fuck it, I’m going back to my room.”

Ian was still in the exact same position Mickey had left him in - facing away, with the blanket pulled up over his head. Mickey sighed and walked around the bed, and was just about to squat down and ask Ian if he wanted any coffee when his foot knocked over a half-full beer bottle on the floor.

“Fuck!” Mickey yelled, caught off-guard by this newest complication in an already complicated morning. But then he wrinkled his nose as he caught a familiar smell, and gingerly picked the bottle up with the neck held between two fingertips, sniffing at the contents. “Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, Ian!”

It was a piss bottle. Ian had pissed in the bottle. Apparently he couldn’t even muster up the energy to go to the bathroom.

With cold piss soaking into the carpet between his toes and panic clawing its way up his throat, Mickey swayed under the realization of just how bad Ian’s condition was. He opened the window and threw the bottle out of it, then sat on the edge of the bed, next to the swaddled lump of Ian’s body.

“Hey,” Mickey said, in as gentle a voice as he could manage. He reached out hesitantly, then laid his hand on the section of blanket covering Ian’s head. He could feel the warm shell of Ian’s ear under his palm, through the fabric. “You want me to bring you something? Coffee? Breakfast?”

Ian didn’t move. Didn’t react at all.

“Alright.” Mickey had never had to take care of someone before. He’d never learned how. But he wasn’t an idiot, and he could at least do what felt right. “How about I bring you some stuff, and you can have some if you feel like it.”

Nothing.

“Good talk,” Mickey sighed. Then he reached down and grabbed a stray plastic bag off the floor, and set about gathering up anything that his boyfriend might use to kill himself.

There was the gun under the bed, of course (Mickey didn’t want to be caught unarmed if someone broke in at night). There was the drawer full of weapons, and Mickey’s favorite pocket knife. He swept all the bottles full of pills into the bag in a cacophony of rattling, then found two more knives. There was the shiv that Mickey made in juvie, and smuggled out as a souvenir. A stray pack of razors. A baggie of coke.

Ian didn’t move once as Mickey gathered up anything vaguely deadly in their bedroom. By the time he was done, he had two bags full of dangerous objects, and a nagging suspicion that he’d missed stuff. But Mickey was tired and irritated and desperately in need of coffee, and Ian didn’t look like he was up to killing himself that particular morning, so Mickey went to go and fix himself some breakfast.

To his surprise, there was food already on the stove when Mickey wandered into the kitchen. Fiona, who was fishing knives out of the pile of unwashed dishes in the sink, glanced at him as he approached.

“There’s eggs and bacon,” she said, by way of greeting.

“I thought we were out of food.” Mickey peered into the pans skeptically.

“You were. I figured I shouldn’t count on your fridge being stocked, so I brought this stuff over.”

“Right,” Mickey huffed, grabbing a plate and scraping food onto it. “You figured you can’t count on me, so…”

“Well, I was right.”

Mickey dropped the plate onto the counter with a loud clatter and rounded on the eldest Gallagher sibling. “You got something you want to say to me?” he demanded, readying himself for a yelling match.

But Fiona backed off a little, shaking her head, and Mickey noticed the dark circles under her eyes and the tangles in her hair. “Sorry if I’m being a dick,” she sighed. “I just… I’ve been here before. I know what you’re getting yourself into. I didn’t have a choice when I was growing up. I had to look after Monica, and look after the kids. But if I’d had a choice… if I had the option of handing all that off to someone else, I would have done it in a heartbeat.”

“And you think that’s what I want? You think I wanna get Ian out of here? Make him someone else’s problem?”

“Maybe not yet,” Fiona said gently. “It’s been a day. But after a week of this, then two weeks, then three, and then when it swings back the other way...” She reached out tentatively and laid a hand on Mickey’s tensed shoulder. “It’s a fucking lot to deal with, Mickey. Harder than looking after a kid. And the rest of your life isn’t going to stop and make room, either. There’s no shame in admitting that you need help with this.”

“Help like sending Ian to a fucking mental ward?” Mickey scoffed and grabbed his plate of food, shrugging Fiona off and stomping over to sit down at the table. He ate a mouthful of scrambled egg, and to his irritation it was pretty great.

Nika and Svetlana emerged from their bedroom at the smell of food, and paused to make out in the kitchen while Mickey pulled a face and Fiona scooted around them, looking somewhat alarmed. She sat down at the table opposite Mickey, her hands wrapped around a mug of black coffee.

“Food good?” she asked - a tentative olive branch.

“Too much salt,” Mickey lied, glaring down at the table like it had personally offended him.

They sat in silence for a few moments, while somewhere in the background Svetlana fed Nika bacon directly from the pan.

“How long have you and Ian been going out?” Fiona asked at last. “He never really spilled the details.”

Mickey cast his mind back - all the way back to the day when he was woken up by the cold weight of a tire iron in his back. “About three years, on and off, I guess.”

“Jesus,” Fiona commented softly.

“He ever tell you about me?” Mickey queried, privately curious to know how Ian talked about him with other people.

“No. Ian’s always liked to handle his own stuff, you know? He’s so secretive. I was real surprised when he told me he was gay. Not because… I mean, I already knew. But I was surprised that he told me.”

“So when’d you find out about us?”

Fiona smirked. “Well, when you moved in that was kind of a big clue.” She scanned Mickey’s face for a moment, taking in his injuries. “I heard you came out.”

Mickey felt his muscles tense involuntarily. “Fucking Kev and his big fucking mouth,” he muttered.

“Hey, you didn’t exactly do it quietly,” Fiona said, laughing a little. Then her expression turned serious - even a little fond. “That was pretty brave.”

Mickey jerked his head in the direction of his bedroom door. “Didn’t have much choice.”

“You could have let him walk away.”

Mickey said nothing.

“Do you love him?”

“Why does everyone keep fucking asking me that?” Mickey exploded, throwing a dirty look in Svetlana’s direction. She smiled and raised a middle finger at him. “It’s no one’s fucking business if I do or not. That’s between me and Ian.”

Fiona raised her hands in mock surrender. “OK. But if you do, could you tell Ian? You never know, it might help.”

Mickey stared down at his plate. “Did it help his mom?”

The lack of a reply was the only answer that Mickey needed.

After breakfast, Fiona took a plate of bacon and eggs and a bottle of water into the bedroom, to try and tempt Ian to eat. She closed the door behind her, but Mickey could hear her murmuring softly - a one-sided conversation.

“Baby needs changing.”

Mickey glanced up briefly from the cup of coffee he was pouring to find Svetlana standing in the kitchen, the baby balanced on her hip, red-faced and grizzling.

“OK,” he said, caught off guard. “Thanks for the update.”

Svetlana narrowed her eyes and hoisted Yevgeny in Mickey’s direction. “Baby needs changing,” she repeated, a steel edge to her voice this time.

“Jesus fucking Christ, can you not see that I’m dealing with something here?” Mickey snapped, gesturing in the vague direction of his bedroom.

“Nika and I go to work. You change diaper, then deal with crazy boyfriend.” Svetlana shoved the baby towards Mickey, and his arms automatically came up to secure his son against his chest, catching the smell of shit on the air as he did so. Satisfied, Svetlana began gathering up her things.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Mickey said hastily, following her to the front door, where Nika was waiting with a bored expression. “This is serious, Ian’s really fucking sick.”

“And baby needs changing,” Svetlana shot back brusquely as she left the house. She clattered down the steps in her heels and walked away without another word, Nika close behind, as Mickey stood in the doorway with a shitty-smelling baby in his arms, feeling thoroughly emasculated.

Yevgeny’s grizzling was threatening to turn into a full-blown tantrum, so Mickey carried him back into the house and laid him out on the changing table. He unbuttoned the kid’s onesie and folded the material aside, then took a deep breath and untaped the dirty diaper with all the caution of a man disarming a bomb. He blanched at the sight of its contents.

“Ah, fuck this.”

But Mickey couldn’t exactly walk away and just leave the baby like this, so he disposed of the disgusting old diaper, then wiped the shit off Yevgeny’s ass with the baby wipes, then hesitated for a moment before powdering the freshly-cleaned butt. He’d seen women doing that in ads, so it seemed like the right thing to do. Then he retrieved a fresh diaper, lifted up the baby’s butt to scoot it underneath, then taped it up and rebuttoned Yevgeny’s onesie.

“There, you happy now?” he demanded, lifting his son up under the armpits and glaring at him. Yevgeny seemed to think it was a game, and he wriggled and shrieked happily, kicking his fat little legs.

Mickey smiled despite himself - despite the whole terrible situation he was in, and despite the fact that he was sick with worry over Ian. He brought Yevgeny back to his chest and bounced him a couple of times, trying to get used to the unnatural weight of a baby in his arms. He cupped Yevgeny’s head, feeling the silky strands of blond hair beneath his fingers.

Mandy had gone out as well, and Fiona was still in the bedroom with Ian. Mickey looked around carefully, even peering around the corner to make sure no one was eavesdropping. Finally, he tucked his chin down so that his mouth was right next to Yevgeny’s ear.

“I love you,” he whispered hoarsely, so quiet that it was barely audible. If he was going to say it to Ian, he needed to practice. Mickey had never said it out loud before - not to anyone. It just sounded so… _gay_.

Yevgeny didn’t care though. He seemed to like the way Mickey’s chest rumbled when he talked - rubbing his face sleepily on Mickey’s shirt.

“I love you,” Mickey said again, a little louder, and this time his voice cracked with emotion. He cringed at the sound of it, and turned on the spot as if trying to hide his embarrassment from himself.

Kenyatta was standing in the living room, staring at Mickey.

“The fuck are you looking at?” Mickey yelled, furiously trying to suppress the tears that had been threatening to spill over..

Kenyatta didn’t even flinch. He just shook his head a little and grabbed the coffee pot off the table, pouring himself a cup. Mickey thought of Mandy’s poor, battered, defiant face, and rage started mixing in with humiliation to create a toxic concoction.

“How about you put that the fuck down or you start paying some fucking rent?” he demanded, taking a few steps closer to Kenyatta.

“Hey, what’s going on?”

His shouting had brought Fiona out of the bedroom, and she looked from Mickey to Kenyatta and back again like they were both crazy.

“Nothing,” Mickey snapped, watching Kenyatta pour the rest of the cup in quiet, smug defiance. “Just wondering how I ended up with so many fucking people in my house.”

Fiona relaxed a little and scoffed. “Yeah, I’ve been there.”

Slowly calming down, Mickey found the presence of mind to ask, “How’s Ian doing?”

“Still not eating. But he drank some water so… I guess that’s something?”

“He say anything to you.”

Fiona nodded sadly. “Just now he told me to go away and leave him alone. That’s it.”

Mickey clenched his jaw. Glancing down at the top of Yevgeny’s head, it occurred to him to ask, “Hey, uh, don’t suppose you could watch the kid for a few hours?”

“Sorry, I gotta get to work. I’m already late.” Fiona grabbed her coat and bag, and pulled on a woolly hat. “Text me if there’s any change, OK?

“I don’t have your number.”

“It’s in Ian’s phone. I gotta go, I wish I didn’t have to, but…” The sentence trailed away, and Mickey realized that she was totally sincere. Even though she spent all those years looking out for her crazy mom, she’d still do it all over again for Ian.

But Fiona had to go to work, and so she left. And then Kenyatta left as well, to do god knows what. And then it was just Mickey, alone in the house with a baby in his arms and a boyfriend who wouldn’t get out of bed.

Suddenly, Mickey found himself wishing for an overcrowded house again.


	2. Chapter 2

“Slow,” Ian breathed. “Slow.”

He slid his hands up Mickey’s thighs and settled them upon his hips, taking hold of them firmly so Mickey had no choice but to obey. Mickey swallowed drily, then let out a long, shuddering breath.

They hadn’t done this properly for weeks - longer than Mickey could ever remember them going without fucking when they weren’t separated by distance or steel bars. They didn’t do it like this often, either - with Mickey on top and Ian underneath him. But Ian was in a state of constant exhaustion, and Mickey had been practically crawling out of his skin with pent-up horniness, so here they were.

Mickey was no good at asking for stuff in bed - at least, not anything gentler than “fuck me harder” and “pound my ass.” So instead of talking, he grabbed one of Ian’s hands and pressed it against his stomach, sliding it upwards over his skin, and Ian - thank god - got the message and moved his hand farther up, cupping Mickey’s ribcage and rubbing a thumb teasingly over his nipple. Mickey loved having his nipples touched during sex; nothing could make him unravel faster.

He leaned backwards a fraction too far and Ian hit a painful place inside him, making Mickey flinch and gasp. Ian’s hand stilled.

“Y’alright?” he asked softly.

Mickey nodded. “Just… deep.” Deeper than he was used to, with gravity pulling him down onto Ian.

He rolled his hips experimentally and stifled a groan at the way it felt, bracing one hand on Ian’s chest and dropping the other down to stroke the head of his cock lightly. Ian resumed touching Mickey’s nipple, with teasing little tugs, and with his free hand he cupped Mickey’s balls and lifted them up from where they had been resting on Ian’s groin, so that he could see where they were joined.

“You look really good like this,” Ian said, his voice husky and quiet. “On top of me.”

Mickey choked back a moan, swallowed again, nodded in acknowledgment. He hadn’t touched himself much, but after going this long without sex it didn’t really matter. “Close,” he muttered.

Ian smiled faintly. “Go on,” he instructed. “Finish up.”

The words were like music to Mickey’s ears. He shifted around until Ian hit a place inside him that felt amazing, and then started rolling his hips rhythmically, getting faster and faster, hitting that good place on every other stroke as he took his cock in his whole fist and started jerking it, rapid and efficient.

“Come on my stomach,” Ian whispered. “On my chest.”

“Jesus _fuck_ ,” Mickey sobbed under his breath. Both of Ian’s hands were on his nipples now, pinching and tugging and stroking them, sparking tendrils of pleasure that joined up with the sensations from Mickey’s cock and ass and filled his whole body. He screwed his eyes tight shut as he felt the pleasure finally build to a climax, savoring the delicious tension right before it broke. Then it was there, he was shooting - long streaks over Ian’s stomach and chest, followed by weaker dribbles that spilled over his fingers and dripped onto Ian’s groin.

It was one of those things - like coming on Ian’s face - that always seemed stupid and shameful in the aftermath, but in the moment there was nothing hotter than looking down at Ian’s lovely, lean torso and ruining it with milky lines of jizz. And Ian was so deep, so firmly inside Mickey’s body, that the peak lasted longer than usual - Mickey’s shoulders shuddering as it finally wound down. When he was done, he carefully lifted himself up and free, then toppled off of Ian and lay next to him in the bed, panting.

After a few long seconds, Ian reached down and removed the condom with a snap. As he tossed it into the trash without tying it off, it became clear that he hadn’t come.

“Just… give me a minute,” Mickey said, closing his eyes as the sex-fog in his brain dissipated and was replaced by that rare clarity of mind that guys only ever have in the ten minutes immediately after shooting a load.

Ian just stared up at the ceiling, scratching his chest absent-mindedly. “Don’t worry about it,” he replied, after a moment. “I’m good.”

Glancing down, Mickey realized that Ian wasn’t really hard any more. “You sure, man?” he asked, caught off-guard by the declaration. All the times he had come first before, Ian had either finished up quickly or complained until Mickey finished him with his hand or mouth.

“Yeah. I enjoyed it, I really did. It was great. I just…” He shrugged, as much as he was able to while lying down. “I know I’m not gonna be able to come.” He looked away as he said it, busying himself with grabbing Mickey’s T-shirt off the floor and wiping the semen off his belly.

Mickey stared at him, but no further clarification was forthcoming, so he decided not to push it. He rolled over onto his side and got a small thrill when Ian pressed up behind him, wrapping his arm around Mickey’s torso and kissing the back of his neck. He could feel the warm, soft lump of Ian’s cock against his ass, and there was something strangely comforting about it.

“You’re so quiet,” Ian said, just as Mickey was starting to doze off. “When we fuck, I mean.”

Mickey felt a hot stab of anxiety as he wondered if he was shit in bed and Ian had finally been pushed to say something about it. But all he said out loud was, “I’m sorry, you want fuckin’ show tunes or something?”

Ian pinched his nipple in retaliation. “No, asshole. Just… you can make noise, if you want to. We don’t have to hide any more.” His lips brushed Mickey’s skin as he spoke. “It’s not like Mandy and Kenyatta worry about keeping the noise down. Or Svetlana and Nika.”

“Yeah, well…” Mickey could say a lot here - about how the habits of a lifetime of fear couldn’t be broken in a few weeks. But instead all he said was, “You make enough fucking noise for both of us.”

Ian huffed in amusement, like he didn’t have enough energy to laugh properly. Ian didn’t seem to have enough energy to do anything properly, these days. After the awful, nail-biting stress of that first week when he had refused to get out of bed at all, Mickey had nearly cried in relief when Ian had wandered out of their bedroom one morning and silently joined him for breakfast. He’d thought: _thank God, it’s over_.

But Ian wasn’t better, not really. He still slept or laid around most of the time, and even the smallest tasks seemed to exhaust him. He went back to work, but Mickey suspected that he was doing coke just to get through his shifts. It was like nothing Ian did gave him any happiness any more - like he only got out of bed because he knew it was expected of him, not because he wanted to. And Mickey couldn’t help but wonder if Ian had even wanted to have sex, or if he simply felt obligated to get Mickey off.

An all-too-familiar sound cut through the afterglow, then - the sound of a baby wailing. Mickey groaned instinctively and clapped a hand down over his exposed ear.

“When’s it gonna stop doing that?” he complained. “Fuck’s sake, can the kid not go to the bathroom by himself yet?”

“He’s gotta figure out how to lift his head first,” Ian murmured distantly.

“My legs don’t fucking work yet.”

Ian sighed, then sat up. “I’ll take care of him.”

He hoisted himself out of bed with great effort, then pulled on a pair of Mickey’s sweats that hung loosely off his hips. Ian wandered out of the room as Mickey rolled over onto his back and stretched, wincing as his back popped. In the other room, he could hear Yevgeny’s crying wind down into snuffles, and after about a minute Ian wandered back into the room with the baby held against his bare chest, bouncing him lightly.

“His diaper’s clean,” he explained. “I think the little guy just wanted some attention.

Mickey looked up at the two of them lazily, something stirring inside of him at the sight of Ian taking care of Yevgeny. _My boyfriend_ , Mickey thought, weighing the idea in his head. _My boyfriend, and my son._

“What’s all the fuss about, little man?” Ian asked, sitting back down on the bed, then lying back and holding Yevgeny in the air over his head. The baby wasn’t really crying any more - too busy looking down at Ian in distracted amazement.

“Probably wants some fucking booze, if he’s really my kid.”

Ian brought Yevgeny back to his chest, letting the baby rest on his warm skin like he was a possum baby or something. “There’s no way he’s not yours,” he said. “He looks exactly like you.”

Mickey scoffed, then looked at the infant uncertainly. What little hair he had was pale and blond, but his eyes were a familiar deep blue. “You think?”

“Yeah.” A slight grin curved the corners of Ian’s mouth. “You’re even the same height.”

“Hey!” Mickey exclaimed warningly, showing Ian the back of his hand, but he was laughing as he did so.

Yevgeny’s eyelids soon started to droop, and before long he was slumbering and drooling on Ian’s chest, rising and falling with Ian’s slow breaths.

“You’re real good with him,” Mickey commented.

Ian shrugged. “We all kind of helped raise Liam. Though he was a quiet baby, not like this one.”

They stayed there like that for a while, until Ian said that he was tired and Mickey lifted the baby off him, laying him down on the bed while he pulled on his discarded pants and T-shirt.

“Not that shirt,” Ian mumbled, nearly asleep.

Mickey looked down and realized he was wearing the shirt that Ian had used to clean the come off his stomach. “Ah, gross.”

Mickey tugged the come-stained tee off his head, threw it across the room, then grabbed the only other shirt within arm’s reach, which happened to be Ian’s tank top. He shrugged it over his head, then picked up the baby and wandered out of the room in search of food.

He was just sniffing a takeout carton from the fridge when Svetlana returned home, speaking rapid-fire Russian with Nika. The language grated on Mickey’s nerves, especially since he suspected that they used it to talk about him insultingly while he was standing right there.

Suddenly, Nika was lifting Yevgeny out of Mickey’s arms and balancing the baby on her hip, bouncing him in a bored, detached way. She wandered away into her and Svetlana’s shared room, and Mickey got a nasty suspicion that he was in for a lecture.

“We must talk,” Svetlana said briskly, as soon as Nika and Yevgeny were out of the room.

“I told you, I ain’t raising pay at the Rub ‘n’ Tug,” Mickey said immediately. The topic had come up before, with Svetlana apparently having appointed herself as leader of the Hand Whores Union.

“Not about pay,” Svetlana said, folding her arms. “I am pregnant.”

Mickey glanced over at her, his face wrinkled in disgust. “Well you’re not fucking pinning this one on me. I only dumped the one load in you.”

“Is not yours. Client at Rub and Tug paid for full service, and the condom broke.”

“Alright,” Mickey sighed, already trying to remember where he left his brass knuckles. “Gimme his name, I’ll go over to his house and beat the money for an abortion out of him. I’m sure as shit not paying for it.”

“I have better idea. I cook baby for nine months, then we sell it.”

Mickey looked over at her warily. He had gotten into some fucked up shit in his short life, but he did have his limits. “Yeah, I’m not really down with baby-selling.”

Svetlana rolled her eyes impatiently. “We sell baby to rich couple with broken tubes. Nika looked it up on her phone. People pay shit load of money for healthy baby fresh out of oven.”

The phrase ‘shit load of money’ made Mickey’s ears prick up. “How much money we talking?”

His wife grinned. “Twenty thousand,” she said slowly, emphasizing each word carefully. “Minimum. Plus all hospital bills.”

Mickey stared at her disbelievingly. “You’re serious? You’re telling me some assholes out there are willing to drop twenty grand on some whore’s broken condom bastard?”

“We make up some other story,” Svetlana replied, entirely unfazed by Mickey’s harsh description. “Rich people are stupid, they will buy anything.”

He weighed the plan in his head, trying to find the catch. “Alright. So what do you need from me?”

“Prenatal vitamins. And herring. I have pregnancy hunger for herring.”

“Fucking figures,” Mickey muttered. “Fine. Only ‘cause I gotta go out for food anyway. This has stuff growing on it.” He dropped the carton in the trash.

Svetlana smiled, then leaned over and kissed him on his cheek. “Thank you, husband,” she cooed in her faux-sweet voice.

“Yeah, yeah.” Mickey was doing math in his head. “You know, if you wanna start packing these kids in back-to-back you could pull in like twenty-six grand a year. Maybe more. We could start a second business. Hey, can you do twins?”

His wife just rolled her eyes. “Vitamins. And herring.” She paused, then added, “And strawberry ice cream.”

She walked away, probably to go and let Nika check if she could see the baby yet.

Later, after Mickey had been out to pick up Svetlana’s dumb vitamins, and stopped in for a few drinks at The Alibi, he returned to find Ian slumped on the couch, watching TV with a slack, disinterested expression.

“Hey,” Mickey said, tossing a fresh pack of smokes onto Ian’s stomach. “Svetlana’s pregnant again.”

That stirred Ian out of his funk temporarily. He stared up at Mickey. “Did you…?”

“Ew, no.” Mickey kicked Ian’s leg off the coffee table and went to go put the ice cream in the fridge, calling back over his shoulder. “She got knocked up at work. We’re selling the baby.”

Ian huffed out a weak laugh. “Of course you are.”

Mickey returned to join him on the couch. “What you watching?”

Ian shrugged. “Some comedy thing.”

Mickey didn’t recognize the show, but it had bright colors and a laugh track, and looked pretty watchable. After a few minutes Ian started leaning into his side, and then dropped his head down to rest on Mickey’s shoulder. Tentatively, like Ian was a wild animal that he was trying not to spook, Mickey pulled his boyfriend down further until Ian was lying on his back, his head resting in Mickey’s lap, turned to one side so that he could watch the TV.

It was kind of nice, sitting here like this. Mickey let a hand drop down to rest on Ian’s head, then sank his fingers into the coppery locks of hair, massaging Ian’s scalp. He startled a little when Iggy kicked the front door open and came sauntering in, but his brother only spared the two of them a cursory glance before slumping down into the armchair and starting to pack weed into his grinder.

Mickey still wasn’t quite used to it - the idea that he could sit in his own living room with his boyfriend’s head in his lap, and not have to leap apart when someone walked in. The sneaking around and secrecy had been kind of exciting in its own way but this… this was something else.

“This show fucking sucks,” Ian muttered, though he didn’t sound like he minded.

“Yeah,” Mickey agreed.

They kept watching it anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

If Ian were to describe how the past couple of months had felt, he would have said that it was like trying to run up a steep hill with great weights attached to his hands and feet, and a backpack full of rocks straining at his shoulders. But his family, and Mickey, they couldn’t see any of these weights, and Ian could tell they were getting frustrated by his slowness, his exhaustion, and they kept yelling at him to just stop messing around and _run up that damn hill._

The cocaine helped while he was on it, and made things worse when he wasn’t. Ian made decent money and could afford to buy some of his own coke, but most of the time he would find himself snorting a stranger’s stash while clumsy, eager hands patted at his body and slimy lips slithered over his neck. Ian tried to care, tried to feel ashamed of himself, but mustering up any kind of genuine emotion or self-respect felt impossible.

In truth, he hadn’t been quite right in the head since the army. In the space of a few short months, Ian had gone from being disciplined and determined, with a clear idea of where he wanted his life to end up, to being cast adrift in the world with no plan or destination. And he’d been fine with that for a while. For a while, it was exhilarating. For a while he’d felt like he had everything under control, and then it was like reality caught up with him and exposed him for the worthless, stupid, drugged-up high school dropout that he was.

“Hey.”

The bed next to Ian dipped - Mickey sitting in the curve of his body. Ian felt a hand come to rest on his shoulder, squeezing it lightly.

“Having a bad day?”

Ian closed his eyes, sighed heavily, then pulled the blanket down off his face so he could look up into Mickey’s concerned face. “Nah, not that bad,” he replied. “Just… tired.”

“Well, you worked a long-ass shift last night,” Mickey said, with forced lightness. He was making excuses, and Ian was pathetically grateful for it.

“Got another one tonight,” he realized aloud, both exhausted by the thought of it and perking up a little at the prospect of scoring some coke.

“Fuck, man,” Mickey sighed. “At least you’re making good money, I guess.”

“Mmm,” Ian rumbled, rubbing the heel of his hand into the dip of his eye socket, trying to wake himself up. As he sat up in bed, he caught a familiar smell on the air and lifted his heavy head with a simple inquiry of, “Coffee?”

“Figured you could use it,” Mickey confirmed, picking the mug up off the table and handed it to Ian, who cradled it in his hands and held it under his nose, breathing in the pungent steam rising off it.

As he sipped the hot drink, Ian watched Mickey get dressed - pulling pants on over his boxers, and one of his jacket vests on over the T-shirt he slept in. His black hair was still slick with yesterday’s pomade, so Mickey just combed it back with his fingers and it settled comfortably on his head - unlike Ian’s, which was constantly trying to form rebellious little curls, and had to be bullied into submission. Mickey’s expression and body language changed too, as he tucked away those tender parts of himself that he only ever shared with Ian, and pulled on the tough guy attitude that he wore like a second skin.

“You know, I never thanked you,” Ian said quietly, looking down into his cup.

Mickey glanced over at him. “For the coffee? It really ain’t a big deal. Mandy made the pot, I just poured it.”

“No, not for the coffee.” Ian took a deep breath. “For not sending me to the nuthouse like my family wanted.”

Mickey’s movements stilled, though he didn’t turn around just yet. “You, uh. You heard that?”

“Walls are kind of thin,” Ian replied, smiling a little.

He watched Mickey’s shoulders rise and fall in the moment of silence that followed. Then Mickey turned around with a stubborn expression on his face, walked over to the bed, kneeled down and grabbed Ian’s chin with one hand.

“Anyone wants to take you to a nuthouse, they gotta go through me,” he declared fiercely. “This is where you belong.”

Ian brought his hand up to encircle Mickey’s wrist, and Mickey flattened his palm against Ian’s cheek, brushing his thumb over Ian’s bottom lip.

“I am trying, Mickey,” Ian said, his voice shaking a little. “I swear I am. And I’m getting better while I’m here. I wouldn’t get better in a hospital. Monica…”

But he didn’t want to talk about Monica. Ian didn’t have what his mom had. Even in his lowest moments, he had never thought about slitting his wrists in the kitchen like she did, or stealing one of Mickey’s guns and shooting himself in the head. Ian wasn’t capital-D Depressed, he was just depressed. And he was getting better.

“Hey,” Mickey said, leaning forward and kissing Ian on the mouth with uncharacteristic chasteness before continuing, firmly: “You get better on your own fucking schedule.”

For someone who prided himself on being as rude and offensive as possible, Mickey sometimes had a knack for saying exactly the right thing.

After Mickey went out to go and supervise the Rub ‘n’ Tug, Ian laid in bed for about an hour, just staring up at the ceiling. Eventually, though, the coffee caught up with him and he was forced to get up and use the bathroom. When he opened the door to leave, he was startled to find Svetlana waiting on the other side of the door with Yevgeny on her arm.

“You might wanna give that five minutes,” Ian mumbled.

“You watch baby,” Svetlana said, ignoring him.

Ian scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sure. How long for?”

“I go out to work. I will be back at eight.”

Ian nodded, and held out his hands. Svetlana passed the baby too him, and he felt heavy in Ian’s arms, reminding Ian of just how long it had been since he last worked out.

While Svetlana got changed into clothes that would disguise her growing baby bump, Ian laid Yevgeny down in a little chair with a rotating mobile hanging over it that Mickey had stolen from a dumpster. Ian set the mobile turning, and Yevgeny stared up at the little plastic animals, reaching out towards them.

Ian loved Yevgeny. Even if everything else in his life was confused and shit, this little baby seemed to be untouched by the scum and violence of South Side. He had delicate pale skin, chubby arms and legs, and wide blue eyes that he had unmistakably gotten from his father. And even though the day Yev had been conceived had been one of the worst days of Ian’s life, it was still amazing to look down at this beautiful little baby and think, _Mickey made that._

Svetlana returned then, and crouched down by the mobile, smiling and cooing endearments at Yevgeny in Russian. Ian tried to listen carefully.

“What’s that thing you always call him?” he asked. “Sol… something.”

“Solnyshko,” Svetlana replied, stroking Yevgeny’s blond hair affectionately. “It means he is my little sun. Sun, as in…” She gestured vaguely at the weak sunlight filtering in through the window.

“Solnyshko,” Ian repeated, sounding it out.

“Your accent is good. I should teach you more.” Svetlana straightened up and started packing things into her purse - gum, keys, pepper spray. “I want my Yevgeny to speak Russian.”

Svetlana wasn’t very sentimental, but she loved Yevgeny fiercely. Ian glanced over at her - at the bump in her stomach. He thought about Monica, lying in bed for days on end, and the vague memory that Ian had of climbing up onto the bed when he was five years old and starting school for the first time - tugging at her hand and trying to get her to get up and walk him. In the end Fiona had taken Ian and Lip to school, even though it made her late for her own classes.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” Ian asked.

“Make it fast.”

The mobile had slowed to a stop. Ian set it spinning again. “Do you think everyone turns out like their parents?” he asked. “I mean… Your dad sold you. Now you’re selling your baby.”

Svetlana scoffed. “This is not my baby,” she retorted, touching her hand to her stomach lightly. “Yevgeny is my only baby. And he will not grow up to be a piece of shit like his father.”

“Hey…” Ian objected. Svetlana waved her hand impatiently. Ian gave up, and looked back down at Yevgeny, at his delicate little fingers and toes.

“My mom tried to kill herself,” Ian continued at last. That got Svetlana’s attention - though Ian suspected her interest had more to do with a hunger for gossip than actual sympathy. “She was sick - not like me, she had something else.”

“You kill yourself, you do it where baby cannot see,” Svetlana said brusquely. But then her expression softened just a fraction, and as she slung her purse over her shoulder and started walking to the door, she paused for a moment and laid a hand on Ian’s shoulder.

“My husband is a piece of shit,” she said. “But he is not like his father. Maybe you are not like your mother.” Then she leaned down quickly and kissed Ian on the cheek, before clattering out of the house in her heels.

Ian played with Yevgeny for a while, fiddling with his toes, but then he found himself feeling something that he hadn’t properly felt in a while: hunger. It prompted him to stand up and wander into the kitchen, whose cupboards were largely empty save for a carton of Chinese takeaway left over from the previous night, which was sat in the fridge. Ian opened the cutlery drawer to grab a fork (he wasn’t great with chopsticks) and that’s when he found the knife.

He knew that Mickey, Mandy and Fiona had swept the house and locked away anything dangerous, but naturally there had been things they missed. Maybe this knife had been buried in a pile of washing up, and had since emerged.

Ian turned it over in his hands, the food temporarily forgotten. The depression still weighed heavy in his head and body, and looking at the knife made him think about finding Monica, and the twin pools of blood on the kitchen floor, and the memory was like locusts buzzing inside his head. Without really thinking much about it, Ian touched the point of the knife to his wrist and pushed down gently.

“Ah,” he hissed as the sharp point scratched his skin, drawing a small bead of blood and instinctively prompting him to pull the knife back. No. No way. The idea of pushing down more, of cutting through flesh and veins and arteries, was unthinkable. Ian threw the knife back in the drawer, grabbed a fork, and went back into the adjacent room to rejoin Yevgeny.

-

When Mickey returned that evening, stressed out and pissed off because of some fight with Svetlana, Ian was sleeping on the couch with Yevgeny on his chest. The sound of the door woke him up, and he held Yevgeny carefully against him as he sat up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

“Fuck, I need a beer,” Mickey muttered under his breath. “Want one?”

“Sure,” Ian said, even though alcohol usually made the depression even worse. Yevgeny was grizzling, annoyed about being woken up, so Ian laid him down on his knees and bounced him a little until the baby was grinning and firing off little squeaky laughs. Mickey smirked too, when he walked back from the kitchen and saw the two of them.

“How’s this little rat bastard doing, huh?” he asked, putting the beers down, lifting Yevgeny up off Ian’s lap and holding him up in the air. “You being good for your dad?” His face flushed a little after he said that, like he had forgotten Ian was there, and he brought the baby to his chest and held him there one-handed, using his free hand to grab the can of beer and take a swig.

Ian picked up his own can and popped the tab, but he didn’t drink just yet. He looked up at Mickey and the baby. “Hey, Mick…”

Mickey looked at him expectantly. Ian took a deep breath.

“You can take your guns and knives and shit out of the locker, if you want. I’m not gonna kill myself.”

Mickey flinched a little at that, like even the briefest mention of Ian killing himself was enough to upset him. “Hey, man, it was just a precaution,” he said quietly.

“I know, but… it’s gotta be a pain in the ass for you to have to unlock it and lock it up again every time you need something. And I’m not gonna kill myself, Mickey. Not ever. I promise. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Mickey’s face crumpled even more. He laid Yevgeny down carefully in his chair, then kneeled down in front of Ian, looking up into his face searchingly. He looked so worried, and Ian suddenly felt guilty, so he cupped Mickey’s head in both his hands and kissed him, slowly and tenderly. Mickey melted into the touch, then surged forwards - kissing Ian hard and climbing up to straddle his lap.

“Woah,” Ian laughed against Mickey’s mouth. “Talking about suicide really gets you going, huh?”

“Shut the fuck up.”


End file.
